Volunteer for a Lifetime: Doris Jones is honored
Published: June 9, 2005
Doris Brown Jones writes poems about friendship, bakes a mean pound cake and says “yes” almost every time anyone asks for help. Jones grew up believing that serving God means serving others. She has done that by sitting with a friend whose son was having surgery, by donating six cakes for a charity event and by finding 600 volunteers for a community-wide graduation party.
The groups that she has worked with over the years include the YWCA, the Salvation Army, Step One (now Partnership for a Drug-Free NC), the Mental Health Association in Forsyth County, the United Way, the Girl Scouts, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, the Forsyth County Commissioners and the Winston-Salem City Council.
Today - on her 65th birthday - Jones is being recognized for years of devoted service to this community by receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Piedmont Regional Association of Volunteer Administration, an organization of about 35 local organizations that use volunteers.
This is the first year that PRAVA has given the award, established to recognize primarily people who manage volunteers. The award is being named after Jones, and future honorees will receive the Doris B. Jones Lifetime Achievement Award.
“She is just an unbelievable community volunteer,” said Vicki Wooten, the president of PRAVA and the director of volunteers for Crisis Control Ministry. “If you call her today and say, ‘I need this,’ she will do everything in her power to do it.”
Leeanna Lee, the education director for the Coalition for Drug Abuse Prevention, appreciates Jones’ dependability.
“If she tells you she’s going to be somewhere, she’s there unless it’s an emergency,” Lee said.
Jones said her proudest moment as a volunteer was finding 600 volunteers for the first Project Graduation - a drug-free communitywide high-school-graduation party - in 1990.
Jones is also giving as a friend. When friend Thelma Mahan’s son had surgery, Jones stayed with her at the hospital the whole time.
“Some people are there for you on sunshiny days,” Mahan said. “She is there for you on rainy days. She’s just always there. Sometimes, she may not be feeling that well herself, but she is there for you.”
Jones grew up in Winston-Salem at a time when the career options for a black woman were limited. Her mother would tell her that she needed to choose between being a nurse and a teacher. Nursing was out because the sight of blood made her queasy and teaching was out because … well, she just didn’t want to be a teacher.
“I wanted to work in the business arena,” Jones said.
After graduating from Atkins High School in 1958, she went to what is now Winston-Salem State University for three years before earning an associate’s degree in business administration at Forsyth Technical Community College.
After starting her career at an electrical contracting business, she went to work for Wachovia in 1962 and became, she said, the first black woman promoted to head teller. She began work at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in 1966 as the first black in the sales department. She was a supervisor in the litigation support department when she retired from Reynolds in 1989.
After retiring, she became a field executive for the Tarheel Triad Council of the Girl Scouts. These days, in addition to all her volunteer work she works as a substitute teacher for the school system and runs a catering business, Catering by DJ. One customer blames Jones, or more specifically, her nut-raisin cookies, when people notice that she has put on a little weight.
Jones also recently started a second business, Poetry Treasures and Frames, that puts some of the hundreds of poems she has written on boxes, gift tins and such.
Jones has a son, Mark Christian Jones, and a niece she helped raise, Teresa Brown, who she thinks of as a daughter. She has experienced significant loss in her life. Her husband, John Gibson Jones, died in 1981, just six months after his mother died. Jones’ mother’s death followed hard on the death of one of her brothers. And she had difficulty having a child.
“I lost five babies at different stages,” she said.
She has not let those losses keep her from being joyful.
“You know why?” she said. “Because I know Christ…. When you know Christ, you are able to overcome your adversities.”
Jones is a longtime member of Ishi Pentecostal Temple of Apostolic Faith on Excelsior Street off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. She teaches an adult class at Sunday School, serves as the church’s business manager and is a member of its board of trustees. She is licensed as a minister and preaches from time to time.
When she was 19, her godfather, who was a minister, told her that she would take up preaching one day. Never, she said. About three years ago, that changed. Since the age of 8 or 9, Jones has had visions. One foretold her husband’s death. Another told her that her son would be born healthy. After the failed pregnancies, her doctor was nervous but she was at peace.
“I said, ‘I’m not worried. The Lord gave me this baby.’”
For her, visions are just a part of life. Sometimes, she doesn’t know it wasn’t a real person talking to her until later. In the case of becoming a minister, a voice spoke to her.
“One day I was home and it seemed like the Lord said, ‘Are you ever going to do what I told you to do?’”
That’s when she decided that it was time to heed the call to preach.
Poems started coming to Jones about the same time that her visions did. The poems arrive whole, and she carries a tape recorder around to capture them on the spot.
Jones is known for being frank, so people know not to ask for her opinion unless they really want to hear it.
“She can be stern and to the point,” Lee said.
“I will tell the truth,” Jones said. “I will not dance around the issues.”
She likes to do things in a big way, she said, and, instead of having a quiet heart attack at home, she had one in the middle of Hanes Mall in 1998.
The heart attack was a blessing in disguise, she said, because doctors discovered a seizure disorder that is now being treated. It explained why people would say, “Why are you staring at me?” The seizures were so mild she didn’t realize she was having them.
Since her heart attack, Jones has said “no” to a few requests to volunteer.
“I slowed down after that,” she said.
But she still says “yes” a lot. More than one person has said to her, “You never know when to quit.”
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